


Aftermath

by icarus_chained



Series: Weregild 'verse [9]
Category: Norse Mythology, Supernatural
Genre: Afterlife, Aftermath, Canonical Character Death, Family, Gen, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of five ficlets dealing with the immediate aftermath of SPN 5x19 (Hammer of the Gods), for Gabriel, Loki, Hel, Fenrir, Jor. Keeping in mind that Hel is the Goddess of Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lie

Gabriel lay still and silent in her bed. Not sleeping. Slain. Lifeless, until his soul awoke once more and he remembered himself in her Halls. The archangel lay still, and Hel watched him silently.

Her father stood beside her, pained and grim, unnaturally separate from his love after so long as one being, one union in mischief. Loki stood at her side, recalled to himself so much faster than Gabriel, so much more at ease with the afterlife she offered. Gabriel ... would not wake for some time. Gabriel didn't yet know how.

"He didn't see it coming," her father whispered softly, raggedly, his dark eyes still fixed on his archangel. "He truly didn't. He never believed his brother would actually ..." The god's fists clenched tightly against the memory of chains.

"We never do," Fenrir said softly from her other side, around the ghost of a hand between his jaws. "We never do." Her brother's head drooped, old pain swamping him, pity in feral eyes as he watched their father's partner, Jor behind him, as pained, as tired.

Loki quivered for a second, his pain so obvious now, when his body, or the echo of his body, was fully his once more, when Gabriel was not there to shield his pain behind insouciant charm. It made her father look ... fragile. Vulnerable. Something clenched inside Hel's chest, something molten and heavy, as Loki took a shaking step forward, and another, and another, until he stood over Gabriel's still form. Until he could reach down and lay a trembling hand on the archangel's cheek. Until he could climb, so very carefully, across splayed wings to lie across his angel's chest, and rest his head in the hollow beside Gabriel's, as close now as he could come to the space they had shared for so long. They watched him, her brothers and her. They watched over them.

In Hel's halls, an archangel lay slain, his god curled beside him. And the Goddess of the Dead vowed silently that someone would answer for the crime.


	2. Exhale

The first breath he takes is ... harsh. Painful. Shocked, stunned. _Empty_. Empty. There is no ... there is no god curled around his soul, no warm and vaguely cruel laughter echoing in his mind, no rush of almost-gentle amusement in his chest. Nothing. Nothing but the ache, and the emptiness, and the memory ...

The blade, his own blade. And the hands that held it, and the face that stared down at him, the hand cupping his cheek as he fell and the almost-pain in Lucifer's eyes, the strange, distant pity in his brother's face ...

He cries out. His first breath, his first exhale, and it's a cry. A scream, a gasp. Agonised remembrance, horrified understanding, lost in emptiness as he realises what was done to him, what it meant, what it cost. He cries out.

Then there are hands around his face, gentle, desperate, and a familiar presence beating against his mind, his soul, his chest. Not the hands of an archangel, of a brother turned killer, but those of a god. Of his god. Loki's hands.

"Gabriel," the god whispers, his face pressed close as Gabriel opens his eyes, as he draws a second breath, swallows the whimper that wants to use it. "Gabriel," Loki pleads, his face, Gabriel's face, looming close above him, dark and creased and worried. Pained. Angry. "Gabriel."

"Loki," he rasps back. "Loki," he says, with his second breath, and wishes it could have been his first.


	3. Crave

The first few hours after, Gabriel didn't understand. Loki knew he didn't. The archangel didn't understand what Hel had done, didn't understand the promise his daughter had made and kept, didn't understand that he was free, and safe, and all of his Heaven and Hell could scream for his blood, and never pass the door. Gabriel's brother had killed him on Earth, but in this place not even First-Father Himself could touch what Hel had vowed to protect, and Loki could not think of that without feeling a fierce, impossible rush of pride.

Gabriel didn't understand that. Too confused, too empty, too caught in the memory of a sword through his chest and an emptiness where once Loki's soul had curled around his. Too ashamed for what he had done, leading both of them to their deaths against a brother he had thought, he had _believed_ , would never truly hurt him. Gabriel didn't understand.

But Gabriel did ... crave, he realised. Very quickly, in those savage moments while his archangel cried softly beneath him. Gabriel craved. Not safety, not protection, but _connection_. Savagery, surety, trust. Gabriel arched into him, hands clutching desperately, empty breath keening as his wings fluttered around Loki in a squall of muscle and feather and pain. Gabriel craved the closeness they had shared, and the cruelty, and the love. Gabriel craved _him_.

So Loki gave himself over. Not quite surrender, not quite mastery. Not quite compassion, not quite cruelty. Just a mouth to share breath once more, and a heart to beat in time, and the bruising confession of a connection that should never have been severed, and never would be. Not in truth. Not while he could hold his archangel close, and taste him as angels had never been meant to be tasted.

Truth be told ... perhaps he craved more than a little himself.


	4. Urge

His father led the archangel out to them, in the end. Loki had to, had to bully and urge him, had to coax him and threaten him and harry him in exasperation out to where they waited patiently. Fenrir would smile about that, perhaps, another day, but today he knew better. Today he understood too well why the archangel was afraid, why he was ashamed, why he staggered pale-faced to greet them.

When Tyr had betrayed him, when his friend had laid a hand between his jaws and looked at him with sincerity, when Fenrir had _believed_ in him, and let them act accordingly ... the cost had only been his own freedom, his own pain, his own ability to trust.

When Gabriel had believed in his brother, had trusted the love he and Lucifer had once shared to keep his brother from actually _killing_ him, when Gabriel had been betrayed ... Loki had fallen too. The archangel's trust had cost their father his life, and Gabriel knew that. And feared to face them because of it.

They could not allow that.

Jor moved first, in the human body that carried his mind within their sister's halls, ever the easiest of them with Gabriel. Fenrir smiled behind his eyes as the archangel's wings fluttered agitatedly, a bird before a snake as Jor reached out gently, and then stilled in something like shock as his brother wrapped his arms around the shaking archangel and tugged him close. Gabriel's hands drifted up in confusion, wondering if he should return the gesture, and Fenrir smiled as Hel crept up behind Jor to take them in her own, to press a kiss to the back of Gabriel's knuckles and murmur softly to him.

And then, it was his turn. As his father glared protectively at him behind his pale lover, as his brother smiled and Hel's eyes shone wetly. It was his turn. Fenrir, who did not trust. Fenrir, who avenged every hurt against his family. Fenrir, who Gabriel had feared from the first, and freed anyway.

Fenrir, who moved softly forward and ducked to rest his great head against the archangel's chest, and the phantom memory of a wound.

"Sometimes they betray us," he acknowledged softly, silently urging Gabriel to understand. "And sometimes ... we get to trust anyway. Sometimes ... we get to forgive."


	5. Trust

It had been Gabriel's idea, originally. Hel was still ... mildly amused by that. And uplifted, too. Gabriel was ... hard to keep down. Hard to repress. And more of a natural Trickster than even her father could claim to be the cause of. The archangel had bounced back from betrayal and death very well, all things considered.

Though the cracks she sometimes saw in his facade, the shake in his step, the tremble of a hand raised to a chest that no longer bore a wound, the way he clung close to her father's shadow and touched like he couldn't bear to be parted, couldn't bear the separation ... Those cracks still worried her. Those cracks still set a curl of rage through her chest.

It was Gabriel's idea, to ask the First-Father for Loki's freedom. Gabriel who told her to expect him, Gabriel who explained with subdued but earnest faith that his Father would come. Gabriel that suggested First-Father could be bargained with, to save them both in a way that would not set Hel in direct conflict with the All-Father.

Not that she would have cared all that much, at this point. She knew full well that Odin's hand had played a part in her father's death, in Gabriel's. She wouldn't have minded in the slightest the chance to settle the debt between them for that ...

But it made sense, to allow themselves some leeway. To make use of someone the All-Father would never suspect. And, perhaps, to give First-Father a piece of her mind too ...

But first ... First there was another matter. Or another, more important piece of the same matter. First ... there was the question of trust. Gabriel's trust, Gabriel's belief, in a Father he had no more cause to trust than he had the brother that killed him. Gabriel's faith in the Father that had abandoned him. Gabriel's faith that could yet again put them all in danger.

"He will come," Gabriel said quietly, meeting her eyes carefully, his hand curled tight around her father's. She met his gaze, looking sideways for a second to catch her father's eye, to ask a silent question and see the quiet confidence there. Not in First-Father, not from Loki. But in Gabriel, in the worthiness of a chance to restore his archangel's faith. And in her. In Hel Lokasdottir, Goddess of the Dead and ruler of Niflheim, who in her realm could command even First-Father Himself to stand down. Her father trusted her for that, trusted her to protect them, to protect Gabriel and his fragile faith.

Her father trusted her with that. Well then. She would not fail him.


End file.
